Experimenting Outside the Twitter Box

The world of social media is ever-changing, and keeping up with the trends can be difficult. We constantly see different tips, tricks and strategies to help beginners and even the most seasoned of marketers improve their skills. Those who follow these trends and adapt in the correct ways often find their strategy ahead of the curve. But there is one element necessary for the success of any social media strategy: experimentation.

In my last post I wrote about tips to help reenergize your Twitter strategy, from content to timing to engagement. These tips were all concluded from the freedom to strategize, learn and experiment myself. Using three accounts over a span of 6 weeks, I analyzed and interpreted what worked for these specific accounts (it’s important to understand what works for one brand or account may not apply to another).

Increasing Content

With more and more brands, celebrities and people joining Twitter, timeline’s have become saturated with information. Increasing the amount of tweets per day was key in this experiment. With this increase came the need for more content, which meant finding, utilizing and repurposing content we already had. Twelve tweets per day, about one an hour, for each account became my starting point.

Type of Content

During this experiment, each week called for a different variation of brand content and leading industry content.

Week 1: 100% branded content

Week 2: 50% branded content; 50% industry content

Week 3: 75% branded content; 25% industry content

Repeating this process each week for a total of 6 weeks, I was able to conclude what type of shared content promoted the best engagement for each account. It was Week 3 (75 percent branded content and 25 percent industry content), on average, that proved to promote the best engagement for all three accounts.

Engagement

Measuring engagement, especially from an ROI standpoint, can be difficult, but measuring the amount of engagement from replies, retweets, and favorites to followers is a great starting point. Each account benefited greatly from the increased amount of tweets, commanding more replies and conversation.

More importantly, that increased activity led to social conversions on landing pages and website traffic. Below is a table of each account’s visit to lead rate via Twitter throughout the experiment.

Account 1: Experiment: 1.8% | Previous 6 weeks: 1.6%

Account 2: Experiment: 1.1% | Previous 6 weeks: 0%

Account 3: Experiment: 3.0% | Previous 6 weeks: 3.2%

(The reasons why Account 3’s numbers are lower but attributed as improvement comes from within the numbers. The visit to lead rate may be .2% lower but the overall visits were higher while the percentage stayed at a steady rate).

Growth

Although the numbers may not seem staggering, the respective follower growth for each account throughout the experiment saw engagement received correlated with the quality of followers each respectively gained. This was concluded by tracking the increased amounts of retweets, replies and favorites by new followers and comparing them to each week’s visit to lead percentage during the 6-week period. Below is a table of each account's follower growth throughout the experiment.

Account 1: 4,890/5,097 Total Growth: 207

Account 2: 387/855 Total Growth: 468

Account 3: 13,810/14,564 Total Growth: 754

All in all, the experiment gave me better insight into each account’s performance and comfort area. This will help in future strategies and experiments to improve the quality of leads each is capable of gaining, giving you the social leads you deserve.

The Author

Zakir is the textbook definition of a self-starter. After dabbling in social media management, Zakir expanded his inbound marketing repertoire studying the ins and outs of web development before officially becoming a web developer July 2014. Today, you’ll find Zakir building custom responsive websites and templates. You can connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.